Page 44 of Them

Broken streetlights hung by copper-wire threads, like corpses from the rafters. The half moon hovered over the strip mall hellscape, a starry guillotine waiting to put it all out of its misery. Whatever charm these formerly bustling hubs had once enjoyed was gone now; the concrete sprawl had lost all appeal.

The man yearned for another log of tobacco under his lower lip. His previous tin bearing a silver grizzly bear was empty, so he stopped at the next gas station to grab more wintergreen. That was the flavor he’d always enjoyed in the locker room. Even expired dip tasted nice, reminded him of times when the soft voices of other people spoke and not just his own croaking rasp. A dark Florida dormitory room with three TVs showing NFL, NHL, and NBA games around the clock, rotating as he sat back on a sofa engineered for relaxing and a lip full of coping while surrounded by something called company.

As the man walked, he spat his fragility onto cracked sidewalks and tufts of weeds. The world would not frown at him for doing so; there was no one left to scold him for any bad habits.

The tobacco helped keep him awake. That’s what he uttered to himself with the small voice of a false affirmation. You’re coping.

Is that okay?

Sure. Sure it is. Real men cope.

Wrong brand, dipshit.

The strip malls became smaller and less dense until the road was surrounded by little more than squat offices, convenience stores, and gas stations. Three or four miles of farmland came after that. The cornfields, unharvested after the Scorpions came, renewing themselves year after year, were bursting at the seams.

Beyond the towers of maize, the man came to a faded green signpost pointing toward MAIN STREET. He followed the arrow. It seemed on his way, more or less. After all, what the highways offered in speed and safety, they sacrificed in scenery and opportunity.

An extravagant concrete construct, about three feet tall and twice as wide, greeted him at the junction between farm and town. He parted the tall, unruly grass to read it.

BROAD PARK, VA: WELCOME TO THE FRIENDLY TOWN OF BROAD PARK.

A Royal Farms station. Unleaded for seven dollars a gallon.

A CVS drugstore with busted floor-to-ceiling windows. He stepped across the shattered glass and browsed for medicine, and walked away with vials of pills and tubes of ointments that could halt an infection, along with melatonin supplements and a pack of Utz barbeque chips. The kind with ripples, his favorite. Expiration date be damned.

An Irish pub adorned with shamrocks. Flanigan’s. He peered inside. The narrow stretch of shelf behind the bar was empty and layered in dust.

A dance studio. Shards of shattered mirrors smothered the wooden floor.

A bougie Brazilian steak chain he recognized. FOGO DE something, the rest of the sign torn away. He couldn’t remember. A massive chandelier of hollow fake jewels swayed over the desolate dining hall. Never got the chance to eat at one. Always wanted to.

A real estate office. Tipton & Tipton. The elegant facade of pebbled stone felt smooth against his calloused fingertips.

A bakery. Rita & Son’s. Closed permanently with a poster-board sign that read: THANK YOU FOR 47 GREAT YEARS! WE WILL MISS YOU! It looked old and new all at once, like a glossy snapshot from a history textbook.

Clothing retailers. Jewelry stores. A bridal shop. He wandered into a Lululemon outlet and swapped his black sweatpants for a pair of joggers in his size. He’d find another pair of jeans soon, having grown accustomed to the denim; it clung nice and hung loose. Lots of pockets.

He took a T-shirt too. No one asked him if he needed help finding anything.

A small-town sheriff’s department. Two massive windows of opaque blue glass standing tall and unbroken. The electric sign out front unlit and silent. The front door had been battered down; as to which species was responsible, the man couldn’t say. He went inside and procured more ammunition.

A day care center.

Several offices of financial employment. Brokers and bankers and lenders and accountants. A law firm.

An Italian restaurant. Buontempo Brothers’ Pizzeria. A cardboard sign taped on the inside of the glass door: PRAY FOR US SINNERS.

At the end of the street, a supermarket fronted by a wide, dandelion-choked parking lot. The man crossed it in long purposeful strides, glancing down to spit the leathery resin of tobacco grit. After the third spit, a small metal object caught his eye. He stopped and picked it up. He was no expert in the field, his firearms knowledge born of necessity, but he recognized it right away. A spent casing. A nearby panel van dotted with bullet holes told the rest of the story. The license plate read: CR41G.

The man continued on, and Main Street’s density gradually dispersed to rural sprawl. It went on this way for two more nights, towns of various sizes alternating with farms and fields, until he reached another ramp marked I-95 NORTH TO WASHINGTON. The promised land.

He followed the ramp’s curving shoulder, then traveled along the median between staggered lines of oxidized cars. It was bumper-to-bumper as far as his night vision could see. Unlike most of the Southern highways he’d traveled, many of these cars had been pried open and torn asunder.

A few hours later, with first light creeping up on the horizon, the man settled for a cramped tollbooth at an E-ZPass stop outside Fredericksburg. He drew down the metallic curtains, curled up on the dirty floor, swallowed twenty milligrams of melatonin, and closed his eyes.

Outside the booth, a quiet dawn greeted the motionless machines. The day soon grew hot and muggy, thunder rumbling in the distant west. The man heard none of it. With little fanfare, he slept until dusk. The supplements suppressed his dreams. Eventually, he stirred and rose and walked again.

Two more nights of weaving between scrap heaps on the highway and two more days spent holed up in Virginia Department of Transportation tollbooths found the man sliding down a cracked concrete embankment onto an I-395 ramp in Arlington, Virginia.